Infinite Loops

Key Takeaways 

• Viewing life as a video game can help you increase your agency 
• Don’t look for meaning; look for use
• Resourcefulness is the defining characteristic of a high-agency person 
• “Pessimists sound smart, but optimists make money.” – Jim O’Shaughnessy 
• The Luck Razor: If you are between two opportunities, choose the one that will give you the potential to experience the greater amount of luck
• The alpha is in all the things that the media ignores, but historians will study
• If a person can extract all of your opinions based on just one of your opinions, then you might be a non-player character (NPC) 
• No matter how smart a person is, they cannot create a list of things that will never occur to them 
• Thinking that you are the genius in the midwit meme is the most midwit behavior possible 

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

Writer, marketer, entrepreneur, and master of mental models, George Mack, returns to discuss the top 0.1% of ideas he’s ever come across, from treating life as a video game to spotting high-agency individuals.

Important Links:

• George’s Twitter
• The Lindy Library
• Roy: A Life Well Lived (Rick and Morty)
• How to Spot High Agency People
• The Mack Meditation
• What is ignored by the media — but will be studied by historians?
• The Early-Late Razor

Show Notes:

• Treating Life as a Video Game
• Finding the Important Metrics
• Embrace Momentum; Embrace Constraints
• How to Spot High Agency People
• How to Increase Your Agency
• The Mack Meditation & Silence as Alpha
• Why Pessimism vs Optimism is the Wrong Debate
• The Future of Media
• What is Ignored by the Media but will be Studied by Historians?
• The Reddit to Facebook Continuum
• George’s Most Midwit Opinion
• Randomness & Feeding the Algorithm
• How to Retain Curiosity
• George as Emperor of the World

Books Mentioned:

• The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot Of) Success in America; by John Gartner
• Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine; by Derren Brown
• What Works on Wall Street; by Jim O’Shaughnessy
• The Secret; by Rhonda Byrne
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas Hofstadter
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World; by David Deutsch